The packing looks good. The blankets are stacked high and the guns secured inside, ready to float to the shop. He steps into the cab and he can feel the extra weight, the load sinking the brothers lower in the truck. Harlan wipes his brow, and Joe’s sweating fierce, red skin like he’s been under the sun.
“Everyone good?” Huddy asks.
“Our brother here,” Harlan says, “he breathing on one lung.”
Huddy looks at Joe, who glances at his watch as if to read not a schedule but a pulse.
“Well, that part’s done,” Huddy says, but they’re only halfway there, and he wishes it was Sunday morning or early on any other day, but if he can’t get the timing perfect for part two, at least they can go in quiet.
“I’d hate to get stopped for a ticket right now!” Harlan says.
All the guns in the back, might as well bring out what’s in front. Huddy reaches over, opens the glove box and pulls out two holstered pistols. Drops one in each brother’s lap. Harlan swivels in the seat to strap the belt on, but Joe frowns at what’s been placed there. He shakes his head, his brow creasing. Three baby brothers playing with cap guns. Then he unsnaps the holster, slides the pistol out and holds it in his hand. He blinks hard, clenches his jaw to strengthen.
Huddy drives west but feels like he’s driving south, out of the leafiest street of leafy Germantown and shiny tall properties to low-slung homes and gray, broken buildings, deserted or looking so with switched-off neon, and down to his store, which feels like all the way to the bottom. Huddy’s prepped his gun locker and his storage room, cleared space on his stout shelves, squeezing TVs and tools together or just dumping equipment on the ground. Tight space, but it’ll fit. It’s not late but the sky changed hours ago, pitch-dark by the time Huddy pulls into the lot—the Dumpster company has pulled the debris Dumpster from the blood bank, replaced it with a fresh one—and around the back, the lights sweeping across the weeds, the truck beeping in reverse like a distress call, a wake-up for the thieves. He backs in close, shuts the engine and the damn beeps.
“Let’s go. Offload quick, no noise.” He steps out, slides the gate up, grabs the top blanket.
The only different position is Huddy switching rooms. He stands by the empty shelves, waits for Harlan to come to him with guns. “Set them here,” Huddy says, and he pats the blanketed shelf. “Don’t stand ’em. You stand ’em, they’ll fall.” Harlan going the opposite way now, walking off empty-handed. If Huddy didn’t need to do the load-in fast, he’d have sectioned his room, not just clearing shelves but setting up special areas for special guns. Group the ’94s on a rack, put the regular guns with the general population. He’ll untangle it all later. Tomorrow he’ll sift ’em out.
He hears the gate slam behind the wall and before long Harlan walks in with the two cases, and Joe follows behind. Joe looks around and wants to but won’t talk.
“Harlan,” Huddy says, “go back to the truck.”
“It’s empty.”
“I know,” Huddy says, and waits for Harlan to know, too.
He throws up his arms, an angry customer who can’t scratch up gas money, and leaves. And Huddy feels bad. He doesn’t mean to treat Harlan like the village idiot, but right now he’s not us.
Joe glances at the shelves and then down at the cases. “Who you gonna sell ’em to?”
“Don’t know yet. Cowboy Hall of Fame.”
“You serious?”
Huddy shrugs, “Just about.”
“So what’s next?”
“Got twenty-four hours to log ’em in. Which I’ll try my best. But I ain’t worried. ATF, they understand slow, but they don’t understand mistakes. It’s what I do log in that I gotta make sure is right. You put a dyslexic serial number in your book, you write something on the wrong line. You don’t abbreviate Tennessee right.” Huddy shakes his head. “You gotta be careful. We don’t want ATF in here, because they’ll find errors, double errors. They’ll find a thousand things wrong.”
“So be careful.”
“Always am.”
“And quick?”
“Yeah, I can do both. What’ll help with quick is a second person for the log-in. You want it to be you or Harlan? Your call. Just walking the guns to me, reading off the info.”
Joe nods. “Harlan can do it. And then you start selling?”
“Yep. Get ’em tagged, get ’em sold.” And Huddy snaps his fingers. Sell the guns and get yours and mine and throw myself a goodbye party.
Harlan brings a gun and reads it and Huddy writes the specs in the book, the manufacturer and the model and the serial number and the action type and the caliber. The date and source are easy because they’re all one thing. Huddy says the serial number back to Harlan, and Harlan says it again, so Huddy’s having Harlan check with four eyes. The log-in can go fast, but the tagging is slower, because Huddy’s gotta price ’em and every once in a while consult the blue book to make sure he knows how.
“These ain’t your rock-low prices,” Harlan says, reading off an inventory tag.
“I guess it’s a new day in the pawn business. I’m going high-end now. And that’s all I’m saying.” A pawnbroker who for six months gets to sell more than pawnshop guns.
“Why ain’t you tagging that AK?” Harlan asks, nodding at the gun that Huddy’s set aside. What Huddy won’t say is he’s not tagging it because he didn’t catch the extra notch on the selector switch when he bought the 47, and when he brought it here. Thought it was semi-auto, like the two others, but now he’s examined it close-up and it’s a Vietnam bringback and it’s full. Doesn’t know if it was Yewell’s mistake or his, so easy to miss a third notch, but he doesn’t have a license for full-auto, and he’s not gonna take the time to get it, just eat the loss. Might as well drop the machine gun in the Mississippi, because he can’t sell it and won’t keep it here. And he won’t call ATF to come get it, because they won’t go away. Been a few years since he’s been audited, so if Huddy hands ’em the AK, they’ll say thanks for turning this in, and they’re smiling but they’re not coming in as friends, so now they’ll ask to see his gun book, and now’s not the time for that. What he says to Harlan is, “Just bring me the next gun.”
“Sure thing,” Harlan says, and he does. But then he says, “What you think can fool you more, a woman or a gun?”
“I don’t know, Harlan.”
“I think a woman can fool you, but a gun can’t.”
“You do, huh?”
“Why, you don’t?”
“I think it’s both. I think, with guns and people, if it’s bad on the outside, it’s bad inside.”
“And what about if it’s good?”
Huddy calling the collectors whose specialty overlaps with Yewell’s, and even others who don’t want the same thing but might buy for trading material because they know someone who does. Huddy talking, “Thought you might want to have first swat at this,” and taking pictures and zapping them over email, reading classifieds in Shotgun News and gunbroker.com, and registering for the big gun show in Oklahoma City next month, which he knows will be a prime mover.
“How many you sell?” Joe says on the phone, and it’s only been days.
“What?”
“You making my money back yet?”
“Can’t start selling the guns for thirty.”
“You said you’d make my money back in thirty.”
“I’m lining up the sales. Calendar hits day thirty—boom.”
“You were saying fast money.”
“Thirty is fast.”
“Huddy, I need that money now. I need the profit now!”
“What are you talking about?”
“Where do you think my cash came from? You think it’s just reserves?”
“It was bank money.”
“That’s right. But not a savings account, if that’s what you mean. That money was borrowed. Theirs, not mine. Took it out on a construction loan.”
“Well, how the fuck would I know that? I don’t know
about your business. I don’t know about your life.” But as soon as Huddy says it, he realizes he’s starting to, that the life and the business are all mixed up, one tangled-up fund.
“You saying you’re betting everything. You saying you all in. Well, I’m always all in. My lots are sitting. And I’m paying interest on ’em. So stop sitting on the guns.”
I’m not sitting, Huddy thinks. I’m only doing what’s legal. He looks over at Harlan, whose mouth is open to understand.
“Where you at?” Christie asks, staring hard at Huddy, who’s staring at the prongs of his fork, at the sliver of meat.
Huddy looks up from his plate to see a pointed finger twitching in a line to find him. “You trust Harlan?” he asks her.
“’Course not.”
“Why’s that?”
“When you ever trust him? Ain’t saying he done nothing when he was here.”
“When was he here?” Huddy wondering when his brother came from all the way out.
“What are you talking about? When he crashed.”
“What—who are you … you talking about Harlan?”
“That’s who you asking about.”
“I’m saying Joe.”
“No you—”
“I meant Joe.”
“Well, Joe. He a different person. From Harlan.”
“The person I talked to today—Joe—he was different. Different Joe.” And a lot like Harlan. ’Cause, it turns out, neither brother been playing pay-as-you-go. Always knew Harlan would play like that, but now he’s learned it about Joe, just on a higher debt level.
“Wouldn’t trust him, if I was married to him,” he hears Christie say. “I mean, seems like he’s always in a fix with his wives. Kind of slippery that way. But you ain’t married to him.”
Not married, but still hitched, Huddy thinks. And what he sees on the video, when he comes in next morning and sees the two cases from his secure back room gone, is a brother. Not Harlan, although Huddy thought it might be. Harlan with his hands on every other piece, had to pinch his fingers against the cased two. Two Harlans, both inside the store at different times, one here now, one last night. But instead of Harlan, it’s the other—inside the tape, inside the store, Joe’s store, but he ain’t a picklock because he has the keys, and he ain’t a burglar because he owns the building, and he ain’t even a thief when he’s stealing from a deal where the first money was his. Huddy watches Joe stab his key into the gun locker, like some after-hours workout, watches him walk inside and disappear and reemerge with the cases. It feels like watching a body scan, Huddy’s own X-ray, the key cutting through layers of his skin, the guns two bones Joe was carrying out. Harlan hears Huddy cursing and asks, “What?”
“Come here, Harlan,” Huddy says. “I wanna show you what a bank run looks like.” Let’s bring my bad brother over here to show him what the good brother’s done. Let’s make it so all three brothers are here.
Ten
Not Joe at the door and Huddy’d like to push past her to get to him, the same way Joe cut straight through his shop, but instead he says, “Evening.” When he rang the bell, he wanted to ring it over and over, the noise repeating, until a body appeared in the doorway with their hands held to their ears. “Need Joe,” Huddy says, and Lorie stares at Harlan beside him, Harlan not an onlooker stuck in back now but up front in the door light with his brother, the two of them lined up tight together.
Huddy watches her mouth move to tell them he isn’t here, but she’s not used to this lie. “Okay,” she says, and her mind searches for a problem at home. Then she smiles, a smile Huddy takes as, You brothers keep pestering at night with your games, but it’s time to stop. “He’s busy with the garden.”
Huddy shrugs. Guess there won’t be a tray with drinks. “Won’t take long,” he says simply. “Need to ask something.” Just, Where are they?
“That right?” she says, but it’s not a question, and Huddy sees her head shake a little because he should know he’s an intruder and doesn’t belong here.
“Yep,” Harlan says, “something he done to Huddy.”
Which is okay, Huddy knew he was bringing Harlan’s mouth, didn’t bring him for quiet, and he figures he’ll match his voice. “Need to ask about some guns,” Huddy says, and talking too much feels better.
“Guns?” she says, her voice scraped with fear. Her eyes shift to Harlan. She touches her neck. Her cheeks flush like makeup smudging, her mouth opens in a puncture.
“His and mine,” Huddy says, pointing inside the house and then turning the finger around on himself. “Not us,” and he flicks his finger between Harlan and him. “Me and Joe’s guns. Our guns.”
He didn’t ring the doorbell repeatedly, but now he’s got a better alarm, a word that for her is both warning and warfare. He watches her eyes blink.
“I’m just here to help patch things up,” Harlan says, grinning.
A gun: not just harmful but criminal, a shot and the blood spray and a splayed body dead on the floor. Their hands are empty, but she worries what arms they’re concealing beneath. Nowhere for her to look off or see past, the two of them filling the doorway, Huddy feels like bringing Harlan is like bringing a crowd, not just a second man but others added onto him, midnight prowlers circling the house, hugging the corners and dark walls—that’s what her scared face tells him, no word or sound coming out of it.
“You want us to wait here?” and then the memory of Joe, his keys in hand to let himself in, and forget about permission and the proper time to enter when Joe’s already barged through. Huddy had only seen the video once but Harlan watched all morning, rewinding it in a loop and doing play-by-play, “Here he is at the counter and where’d he go and now he’s back with presents. Now that’s the way to shop.” The camera catching Joe’s wrist and the Rolex he took years ago, as if he’d worn it last night to justify his claim—and so Huddy, when he saw Joe’s stride without a pause or second thought, would understand Joe was acting ordinary, doing what he’d always done with valuable possessions and therefore regular and right, the guns just another giveaway. Huddy leans close, puts his hand on the door and says, “Let’s all go. Me, you, and Harlan.” The way he buried Harlan at Yewell’s, kept his name down, too, but resurrecting him now. He claps Harlan’s shoulder. She hesitates, eyeing them like thieves or thugs who whisper their crooked plans at her door, when it’s what’s behind her that helped himself and stole. Her suspicion and fear pleases and angers Huddy, but Joe isn’t worried, or else he wouldn’t be back there letting her play doorman. Huddy didn’t call him today, because he wanted to read his expression—plus Huddy needed time to change the locks and the code.
She retreats and he steps forward to find. Inside the house, his eyes searching the belongings and the rooms, but he won’t detect and recover what’s half his. No changed arrangement, the same clean order not affording any clues—he’d ransack and dismantle the furnishings, overturn cushions, tear out linings, but Huddy knows Joe stored the cases better—so he’s just walking in to go out again, sliding the glass door to set out for Joe. Can’t win hide-and-seek with the guns, but he’ll win against Joe. Huddy sights him in the middle distance beyond the pool, but not far off and unseen like before in a back corner. Still obscured by interlocking branches, but they’re only part of what’s screening him. Joe looks crouched, lower, as if he’d taken cover in the bushes, or sunk in a bunker or burrow, and then Huddy remembers the pond and realizes he’s inside the water. They march toward him, past the pool and its green glow, and Huddy grinds his teeth because he doesn’t have a jackhammer to break up the ground. Filing through the garden path, his prior footsteps retraced, and what was special at first visit is familiar on return. This big spread smaller for seeing the vastness at Yewell’s, even if the land between Joe and Huddy was still large and his envy was the same or grown. The blooming flowers, once bright and bunched straight, now paler and wilting. Petals of dying colors, limbs half-bare and some leafless, but the trees aren’t cleared—Huddy sw
ats at a branch that nearly brushes his face, snaps a stick under his foot, which stops her, and she turns back and he sweeps his hand at the ground as if he were confused by the breaking noise, and she turns forward and quickens her step, to keep ahead and away and escape to Joe, her shoulders stiffening so her body looks frail, and Huddy’s happy to tail faster. He hears Harlan kick gravel behind him. Sees boulders that he’d like to roll free in a rockslide. Hears his own feet crush along the footpath. Crossing the bridge, the thin stream flowing underneath, the path curving and Huddy wishes he had a blade to hack through the brush and make his own short way instead of following the snakelines Joe ordered and angled.
“Joe!” Lorie calls out, her voice tensed with fear but also opening into anger, a better method to hail Joe’s attention, not to cry his name but curse it. Huddy advances to the water’s edge to stand over Joe, in waders, knee-high in the water, the rest of him sticking up like a stalk, but after seeing the three approach, he won’t quit working, too many things to do. Three five-gallon buckets of pea gravel, spaced three feet apart and running the length of the pond, PVC pipe driven down into the buckets, and Huddy not seeing a white flag flying from any pole. He stares downward at Joe, as he tests the buckets to make sure they’re set stable. Behind him, the waterfall gushes on the stones.
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